Sir, – I recently watched a video on YouTube of Dublin in the millennium year of 1988. The video began with an aerial shot from the Point Depot up along the quays to the Custom House.
Compared with 2025, the area looked remarkably underdeveloped. On either side of the river Liffey all that was to be seen was scrubland, grimy warehouses and an outsize gasometer.
If you were to view the same scene today, a vibrant metropolis would spread out before your eyes. But we’ll never give ourselves credit.
Una Mullally in her column writes about an ugly city, fake, blighted and soulless (“Why are most new housing schemes in Dublin city so terrible?”, Opinion, April 14th). A letter writer concurs about the “dreadful state of our capital city”, the ugly dereliction and the urban decay (Letters, April 15th).
Downsizing in Ranelagh: a sun-kissed slice of Provence in Dublin 6
Workman’s Club heyday: Where we rubbed shoulders with Paul Mescal, Fontaines DC and Morrissey
I showed my friends in Israel this photo of a starving baby in Gaza and asked them if they knew
Kneecap review: Mo Chara tells 20,000-strong crowd ‘you have no idea how close we were to being pulled off this gig’
I’m not buying it, and will take where we are today, anytime, over the situation 37 years ago. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN AHERN,
Clonsilla,
Dublin 15.
